[00:00:00]

Laura: Hi, Larissa. Welcome to What to Read next podcast.

Larissa: Hello. Thank you for having me back, Laura. It's been a while. I think, I don't remember the last time, but we talked for a really long time. I think it was during the pandemic.

Laura: was your independent like, I remember clearly because I interview my friend, Amy, and she mentioned cozies, and you found the podcast and reach out to me and I was like, Holy crap, there's cozy mysteries. And I was like, and you came and you're basically introduced me to cozy mysteries. And it took a couple of years before I started reading cozy mysteries.

But you were patient and you were supportive in this journey. And I am so so grateful because flash forward to 2024. I was like in a reading rut and I just read my first cozy and I now have been to about 100 of those.

Larissa: It was meant to be.

Laura: They listen to me and now I'm like, wait, there's a teddy bear one, there's this regular one, there's a green reaper, there's this there's [00:01:00] paranormal, like, this is a whole world.

Larissa: Everything. Everything you could dream of. There's a cozy mystery for it. Most likely. And if not yet, there will be eventually.

Laura: Oh, you can write it.

Larissa: Or I can write. No, you know what? I leave that up to the mystery professionals. People, people are, they can be mean about cozy mysteries and be like, oh, they're just like silly, fluffy books.

And I'm like, no, like a lot of these books, I have a hard time figuring out who the murderer is. And I would never be able. To sit and be able to write. A Cozy Mystery, much less like any novel, like, and there's like some authors that write two or three Cozy Mysteries a year and I just have so much respect for them because they have to build so much of this world and also have a murder in each book and you have to make it fresher than the last book, you don't want to repeat a murder or the way that someone's murdered, like, it's a lot of work and it's You know, a lot of [00:02:00] work for also a lot of fun, I don't think I could ever, I've had, I've come up with ideas for mysteries and I'm like, like, I don't know how I could write.

Like, I'm going to ask, I'll ask one of my authors one day, I'll be like, can you write a mystery about this?

Laura: you should pitch it. We're like, Talia editorial team, can you find me an author to write this story?

Larissa: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. I do that. Actually. I have brought up some ideas that I don't want to bring up right now because I don't want them to get. But I have actually come up with ideas with authors and been like, this is great. Let's tell editorial about it. And we've pitched it and none of them have come out yet, but they've liked the ideas.

It's just a matter of timing on some of them, but we, I have pitched ideas. So if you, if any of your listeners are like, I really want to cozy mystery with this and this you know what? Bring it up to me, I might, and if it's like a good enough idea, and like I'll bring it up to our editor, and yeah, so, open door, slightly open door, the door's ajar.

Laura: [00:03:00] Yeah. So the other thing I was telling you is that cozy misters are perfect for romance readers because some of them do have love and love, romance landmine, whether it's a love triangle or there's a looming love affair that's happening with someone. Someone in the town or specific day, and they're actually like, you get the little twists and turns, but you get the quirky characters, the found family or the found town people and the space.

And I think that's like a great bridge if you don't wanna go so gory into thrillers, but you wanna have twists and turns. Cozy mysteries are perfect for this.

Larissa: Absolutely, I think a lot of A lot, I think, well, and a lot of our cozies we sometimes call them rom cozies because they have a very strong mystery thread along with the mystery itself and like I was saying to you before but just to reiterate for your audience that, like, a lot of times romance writers will pen cozy mysteries for one really great example, [00:04:00] actually, is Vanessa Kelly.

She writes a historical romance series. Actually, she's written several historical romance series set in the Regency era. And one of her last books in the Clan Kendrick series, one of the reviews, I think it was Publishers Weekly said that it was a really, it was, that the romance was okay, but the mystery in it was really good because she decided to just try to write a murder mystery in her romance and they like raved that it was a great mystery. And I was like, that's amazing. You should write a historical mystery series. And she was like, actually, I am going to be writing a historical mystery series for you. And that's the Emma Knightley Mysteries. And the first one is Murder in Highbury. And it's Emma Woodhouse from Emma, if she Got married to Mr.

Knightley and then started sleuthing. And she's gotten a lot of great reviews for it so far. Library Journal just gave it a starred review. So if you're a big Jane Austen fan, [00:05:00] you will love what she's done with Emma. Everyone's, a few people like Christina Dodd said it's like the sequel that to Emma that you've always wanted and never got.

And she's solving murders instead. So like that's a, that's an example of a romance writer that Turn to writing mysteries. That one just happened to be a historical romance, writing historical mysteries, but I know that another one is Tracy Hall. She writes romance, and but then for Kensington, she writes a Scotta Shire Cozy Mystery Series, and then under the name Tracy Wilton, she writes a paranormal cozy mystery series for us as well, so, like, you'll definitely see a lot of that.

Laura: Yes, it's amazing. It's a world series search your entire romance. You can try cozies if you're trying to like liquor, don't want to go for the glory and for the stuff. The cozies are a great place to start. And there's millennial cozies or cozies are set in big cities. There's cozies a set with quirky jobs or quirky hobbies.

And [00:06:00] there's You know, the traditional cozy mystery and there's historical cozies, as you mentioned. So there's a whole or historical mysteries to there's not even there's sometimes you can drop the cozy, but we're in the fall. So cozy.

Larissa: there is a cozy mystery for every reader, as they say.

Laura: So we're going to talk about like, what's coming up in the cozy mystery world and there's a lot of titles coming out. So this is probably going to be a quick fire, going to talk about like a few titles and between now. September 24th and moving forward until January, I think, or yeah,

Larissa: Let's try to get through as many as we can as many as I can remember off the top of my head. Although I do have a cheat sheet up. Actually, before we start talking about September 2020 September 24th titles since we just mentioned, it's fall, it's the cozy season. One cozy mystery that I recommend for people who love fall.

Love Halloween with an exclamation point is Emily [00:07:00] Duncan. She writes the Ground Rules Mystery Series for us, which is set in Portland, Oregon. She is writing, she just published back in July, because how we do things is, funny. We publish our Halloween books in the middle of summer and our Christmas books at the end of September.

But it's called Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop and it is a Halloween bookshop mystery. So it's very much inspired by Halloweentown. So it is for millennials. If you are a millennial, if you loved watching Halloweentown on the Disney Channel, all four or five of them or however many Halloweentown movies there are, this is the book for you.

And if you've never read a cozy mystery, you want to start and you want that nostalgic feeling. Like, this is the perfect book to start with because it's the first in a new series, so the next, the second book doesn't come out till next year. And it's about a woman who owns a bookstore in a Halloween town, like a year long Halloween town.

I think it's called, I don't know how to pronounce it, [00:08:00] Elan Hollow, Oregon. And then she's setting up The fall, like the book festival, and murder happens, and of course she has to solve the murder while also trying to prepare for the fall festival coming out. So it just like, screams everything Halloween.

The cover is this like, awesome bright orange and black cover. It's just everything Halloween. And the dog is named after the dog. In Nightmare Before Christmas. What is the dog's name? I don't remember, but, so, it's like very Halloween. Very Halloween. So, Just to start with, just to start off with Halloween.

Laura: read Emily Duncan's coffee truck series and I can, it's fast for writing as greatness is definitely more millennial more,

Larissa: Yeah.

Laura: it leans into that millennial and I think it's great. It's a great, I think they're great bridge to get started. So.

Larissa: Yeah, definitely. The Ground Rules [00:09:00] Mysteries. It's all very coffee based. It's a coffee food truck. And I think by like the third or fourth book, she's like, got her own like brick and mortar coffee shop involved along with the coffee truck. But so there's like a little bit more of the urban feel than like the small town feel, but the coziness of it all is still there.

And it does like go into like a little bit darker topics, but overall, like it's not a scary read. It's like a very hopeful read and, but it's like realistic about, what life can be like in a city. But it is a really good series in that, like, if you love coffee, like, you're gonna drink coffee the whole time that you read that book.

The the first one is Fresh Food Murder, for anyone looking to start from the beginning. But yeah to start with our books coming out on September 24, 2024, I'll quickly go over a few of them. And I apologize to any authors listening if I forgot your title, but I have a lot to talk about. [00:10:00] But one that I really want to talk about is Murder in Italian Cafe by Michael Falco.

It's a, it is set in Positano, Italy. So again, it's, Like kind of a bigger village, like a bigger Italian city, but not like as huge as Rome, but it's not like super, super small. Positano is like very big right now on TikTok as like a destination to go to. But he does an amazing job of making you feel like you are in Positano, Italy.

Like he does such a great job describing the landscape, the homes the people who live there, he uses, he sprinkles in a lot of Italian. language in it. So you really feel like you're like listening to a side conversation in Italian. But he doesn't do it so much that you're like totally lost if you don't speak Italian.

He's just really good at peppering the phrases in to make you feel like you're actually there. That's a really great series. So, it's called the Bria [00:11:00] Barlucci series. I highly recommend the first book Murder in Italian Village. And Michael's just If you're looking for someone who's like super, you just want like a super fun, dramatic read he is hilarious.

I highly recommend if you ever get a chance to go to a book event with him, he is just, he just has you. laughing the whole time you're there and then you end up wanting to be his best friend. And I think he does that in his books, too. You want to be Bria Bartolucci and her friends. Like, you want to be part of that friend group.

And then a couple other books, like I said, we publish all of our Christmas books usually at the end of September, so if you are a person who loves Christmas, Now is the time! Because we have Murder at a Scottish Christmas by Tracy Hall, who I was talking about earlier. That book series is, features Paisley Shaw.

She owns a knitwear store in Nairn, Scotland. And it's a [00:12:00] seaside village, so it's like all very quaint and cute. And like I said, she was previously, or she might still write romance, but she doesn't for Kensington. So she's Good at the romance aspect as well. That's a really good series. Mrs. Claus and the Nightmare Before New Year's Eve by Liz Ireland.

So this is a really fun series. My art editor called it Jessica Fletcher meets Tim Burton because it is always set. in the North Pole in Santa Land and the series stars Mrs. Claus and her husband Nick Claus. And so it's like a very fantastical cozy mystery series. And sometimes she'll do, the author will do all Christmas or she'll have a different A different holiday.

So this one is New Year's, which is right after Christmas. But the one before that was Mrs. Claus and the Trouble with Turkeys. So it was her, Mrs. Claus, who was from Oregon, bringing Thanksgiving to the elves and the people who work in Santa [00:13:00] Land in the North Pole. And then, like, next year's is Mrs.

Claus and the Vicious Valentine, so, again, kind of similarly to Emmeline Duncan's, it's a very fantastical, cozy mystery series, and it's always got Christmas somehow involved because of Mr. Claus and Mrs. Claus and all that. Then a few more. We have a few mass market cozy mysteries. We have Death of a Gingerbread Man by Lee Hollis and Silent Nights are Murder by Libby Klein.

Both of those series have been pretty long running. I think Lee Hollis, I think Death of a Gingerbread Man is like the 17th or 18th in a series. It's also a very funny series. It's written by a brother and sister team. Rick the brother. Wrote the Brady, co wrote the Brady Bunch movie and was also a writer on the , Golden Girls.

Laura: Oh, yeah.

Larissa: So you can imagine like how funny he, how funny these books are based on Rick alone and like the fact that he was a staff writer on the Golden Girls. He's also very hilarious. [00:14:00] And then Silent Nights Are Murdered by Libby Klein. This is actually the last in her Poppy McAllister mystery series because she is writing a new series for us Which is coming out next May called I don't think there's a series name yet but the first book is called Vice and Virtue and it is more of like a Literary mystery and less of a cozy mystery.

There's like a lot. There's a lot more darker stuff going on. But Silent Nights or Murder is the last one by Libby Klein for the Poppy McAllister Mystery. So, it's a good place, it's a good place to end on Christmas. And Now, if you were like, oh, I really wanted to read that series, but I didn't know where to start from the first.

And now you know that when you get to Silent Nights or Murder, you're actually at the end and she actually ties things up.

Laura: Yeah.

Larissa: a lot of times with Cozy Mysteries, like if a series isn't doing well and the author doesn't get a chance to like wrap everything up neatly, it just ends. [00:15:00] Libby's case, or with Libby that is not the case.

Like, she ties everything up very nicely at the end for all her readers, so you don't get left hanging. But yeah, so that is our books coming out this week, September 24th. Now you have to release this episode on September 24th.

Laura: Yes. I'll release this up on 7th of April. Oh

Larissa: But yeah, so that's our, that's those titles.

And then we have so many books coming out this year. At the end of October, we have Ellery Adams. She's releasing the next secret book in scone society mystery, which is called the little lost library. This one was really good. I could not figure out the murder. I was very shocked at the end.

It was just brilliantly written as always as Ellery Adams always does. We also have Daryl Wood Gerber who writes the Fairy Garden mystery series with Kensington. She's coming out with a new, first in a new series with us. It is called the Literary Dining Mystery. I love the hook [00:16:00] on this one. The first book is Murder on the Page and it it features Allie Katt who is a caterer who creates literary dining.

Excursions, I guess you can call them, where she does meals for, that are all literary themed. And then this one, it's all Jane Austen themed. The next book is going to be Great Gatsby themed. So very fun. And it's set in Asheville, or near Asheville, North Carolina. So you've got the great Smoky Mountain, Blue Ridge Mountain backdrop to the murders.

And Daryl is also writing another new series for us in April. So this is for people who really love the quirky. It's called the Aroma Wellness Mysteries.

Laura: my God. So

Larissa: It comes out in like a spa. Very fun. Like I said, if they don't have a mystery for it yet. They will eventually. And here is your spa themed cozy mystery coming out in March.

And that one's fun because it's [00:17:00] actually kind of like a spin off of the Fairy Garden mystery series. It's also set in Carmel on the sea In California, just like the fairy garden ones. And then we also have Joanne Fluke's Lake Eden cookbook. She published the first Lake Eden cookbook, maybe like 10, 15 years ago.

And now we're updating it to include recipes from all the books since then. So there is one, like the title recipe from each of the books. In the Hannah Swenson Mystery Series since the last LinkedIn cookbook was published. So, very fun. Join Fluke. I don't have to say anything more. Her readers know who she is. And if you don't know Joanne Fluke, pick up the first one, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. And then you get taken on the ride of which is Will She or Won't She with oh my god, Norman and

I can't remember his name right now. The other one,

Anyway, , there's a

Huge love triangle that [00:18:00] just keeps on going.

Laura: Yeah. I'm having

Larissa: And then at the end of November, we have Victoria Laurie, who I absolutely adore Victoria Laurie has written the psychic guy mysteries that have that star Abby Cooper those were published by Penguin Random House, I believe, and that series was. Amazing. If you haven't picked it up, you have to. She is so sarcastic and funny and just, you cannot stop reading her books.

Like, I read all of them and I was like, I shouldn't be reading these because they're not Kensington, but I can't help it. I love them so much. And she also wrote the Ghost Hunter Mysteries. And then with Kensington, she wrote a spinoff series of both the Ghost Rider and the Psychic Guy Mysteries.

But now she is going fully fantastical with a trinket for the taking. And that is the first in a new mystery series starring Dovey Van Hollen, who was like, she was the belle of the ball in, I think it's [00:19:00] 1800s Copenhagen, and then she got turned into, I don't want to say it's a witch, but she gets turned into a witch.

She's never aged since, so now she's 200 years old, living in D. C. and has to recover a magic item. And if Victoria Lurie, you know that she has really good romance. So of course she is teaming up with an FBI agent who doesn't know anything about her and the fact that she's actually 200 years old and she has to work with him to solve this murder and to get this trinket back.

And of course, they're funny, witty banter, just like Full on everything Victoria Laurie is good at doing and the cover is so cute I wish I had the advanced reading copy on me, but I don't but it's like this beautiful teal Book, and then it has the most adorable little hedgehog on it. It's so cute It's like the perfect. Yeah, [00:20:00] perfect book for your shelves And then Maddie Day. We were actually just talking about Maddie Day, she's coming out with the second of her c. Barton mystery series. It's called Deadly Crush, and it is set in California wine country. So if you love wine, or if you've always wanted to visit California wine country and haven't gotten a chance to yet, this book will help whet your appetite for that.

And Maddie also writes two other mass market series for us. I'm just going to skip through a little bit just because I have so many books to talk about. We also have a lot of historical mysteries. We have Colleen Cambridge's Phillida Bright mystery series coming. Featuring Agatha Christie's Housekeeper as a sleuth, the fourth book comes out October 22nd, that's Murder Takes the Stage, Vanessa Kelly's Murder in Highbury, which I was talking about earlier, the Emma Knightley book, that also comes out October 22nd.

[00:21:00] I have a lot of books coming out October 22nd.

And then, so some of our January titles we have a couple from Carlene O'Connor, actually. If you haven't read Carlene O'Connor, I highly recommend it. She has two mystery series with us. One is the Irish Village Mysteries, which are very cozy, and then the other series is the County Carey Mysteries, and those are very dark.

The first two are pretty dark, and then the third one You Have Gone Too Far, Which is coming out also in October, that one is really dark. And it's about like a cult and it's just it's really good. It's very, I, when I was reading it, I was like, I feel like I'm reading something akin to silence of the lambs, but set in Ireland.

So if you are like squeamish, I don't recommend the book. I'd recommend reading her Irish Village Mysteries, which are just so like quintessential cozy and they get better with each book. But if you only want like a little taste and you are [00:22:00] reading Cozy Mysteries for the first time and you don't like, there's so many to choose from It can be a little overwhelming.

We have Irish Soda Bread Murder, which is a novella collection by Carlene O'Connor, Peggy Earhart, and Liz Ireland. So, each book, Novella collection is probably about 80 pages long, so you have Carlene O'Connor Peggy Earhart, and Liz Ireland all writing about their series sleuths, and it's just like a little taste I believe the authors in this one tried to make it so that you don't have to read any of the books in order to understand what's going on, so it really does just give you a taste of the book.

The sleuths and their stories and their writing. So highly recommend picking up Irish Soda Bread Murder if you want, if you're like first new to reading cozy mysteries and you just want to get like a taste of like the kinds of, books that you want to read. And also Peggy Earhart has a Irish Soda Bread recipe in there.

So.

Laura: You might as well.

Larissa: like me and you [00:23:00] love our like I can literally eat and I like one like a loaf of Irish soda bread in one sitting. It's insane, especially with some butter on it. Oh my god, it's bad.

Laura: Oh my gosh.

Larissa: We also have Harleen O'Connor's first Irish Village mystery, Murder in an Irish Village, is we're reissuing it in trade paperback.

The first, the hardcover came out like 10 years ago at this point and it's been in mass market ever since. So we're publishing it in trade paperback for the first time and we're going to be Publishing the rest of the series in trade paperback, as well as continuing in mass market. But if you've never read the Irish Village Mysteries, here's your chance at the end of December to start from scratch.

I really highly recommend this series. We also have Mrs. Morris and the Venomous Valentine by Tracy Wilton. So this is part of her air, not, what's that, Airbnb series. Salem B& B mystery series. So if you love all things Salem, [00:24:00] Massachusetts and the witches each book has a different like mythical creature or paranormal creature in it.

So, this one has to do with I don't remember this one has to do with I think it's just a venomous valentine, but she's also has like Mrs. Morris and the Wolfman and Mrs. Morris and the Mermaid, so she usually has some sort of like fun fantastical hook involved. And then in terms of historical mysteries, Darcy Wilde is coming out with her latest useful woman mystery featuring a woman who helps the ladies of the Regency era ton solve crimes or mysteries that have going on or like, there's like a stolen letter or something and they need it back.

Rosalind Thorne's the one to do the job. And fun fact, Darcy Wilde is in September 2025 starting a new series with us featuring the young Queen Victoria. as a sleuth and it's going to be [00:25:00] amazing and I can't wait until the manuscript comes in so I can get a chance to read it because I love that kind of stuff.

I think it's going to be really good. Some people have compared Darcy Wilde's books to like Jane Austen and like the character reminds people of like a 1700s Whoever the main character in Fleabag was like people like feel like it's that like a Regency era Fleabag By the way that she writes her story So I just like can't wait for her to start the young Victoria books And then we have a really fun book if you've heard of Rob Osler.

He writes a Queer cozy so he actually coined the term cozy queer cozy And he writes a series for Crooked Lane, but he is actually now coming to Kensington as well with his first historical mystery series featuring Harriet Morrow in the progressive era of Chicago, which is like towards the end of the 1800s.

[00:26:00] She's a bike riding, trouser, trousers wearing lesbian and has just been given her first job as a female detective at the Prescott agency in Chicago. And she has given one week. To solve the case of a missing maid. So really fun. If you loved devil's chew Rob's book, devil's chew toy. And if you like historical mysteries, you'll really love the case of the missing maid.

And then we have, I'm on my last book. This went faster than I thought when you gave me time to just ramble. We have knife skills for beginners by Orlando Murren. He was. a finalist in MasterChef back in like the 90s, and he also is a cookbook writer. He edited BBC's Good Food podcast, or Good Food, and now he co hosts the podcast Good Food and he's written seven cookbooks, or eight cookbooks at this point, and so [00:27:00] he has written his first mystery, so first his foray into fiction, and then is Knife Skills for Beginners, and it's about a acclaimed chef who takes over a week long cookery course for his friend, , And he has to teach a group of high maintenance chefs.

And, of course, murder occurs, and so it's up to Paul to solve the crime. And a really fun thing that Orlando does is that he actually does provide recipes in the book. And the diary entries before the recipes, some of them contain clues. For the readers to pick up on, which is really fun and something that I haven't seen before.

This book is not cozy though. It, there is some darker themes involved, but it's kind of like in between. It's not fully cozy, but it's not like a full on like, Thriller y novel. It's like,

Laura: it's a mystery.

Larissa: it's a mystery. [00:28:00] a, I just wanted to say like, don't expect it to be fully cozy. It definitely has some cozy elements in it because it's like a very fun read, but it does have some darker stuff in it.

But yeah, so those are some of our books coming out between now and January. As Kensington always has a lot of mysteries. So yeah, and that's my, that's all I have for now,

Laura: Yeah, can you plug in Kensington's website so we can, so they want to find out more about your series and all the different cozies and other fun stuff.

Larissa: Yeah, so you can visit kensington books.com or you can visit kensington cozies.com and Kensington goes. Cozys. com on the front page has a PDF link to our Cozy Mystery booklet for 2024. We will have one for 2025. Just stay tuned. It'll be closer to 2025, probably January 2025, when our Cozy booklet is [00:29:00] accessible on the, as a PDF on the Kensington Cozy's website.

But we'll have print booklets too. So if you prefer print, you can email me and that's at L A C K E R M A N at kensingtonbooks. com. And if you just send me your mailing address I'll get you out a print booklet. I still have some for 2024, so if you want a 2024 booklet, you can email me for that as well.

Laura: Awesome. Thank you, Larissa, for this awesome, episode full of recommendations, because I think it's going to help you burn that season of cozy mystery thrillers, anything in between. I think you. This is a good bridge for those who don't want to go so gory. We got a couple of dark things, but we got cozy things.

We got historical for, I got a little bit of everything for everyone. So

Larissa: We run the whole gambit.

Laura: reset. So thank you, Larissa, for being in the show.

Larissa: Thank you so much again, Laura, for having me. It's always a pleasure to chat with you and I hope I get to [00:30:00] meet you in person one day too.

Laura: Yes.